BBC AMERICA GREENLIGHTS ORIGINAL SCRIPTED SERIES THE WATCH

jackscarab:

New York – October 30, 2018 – On the heels of hit series Killing Eve and the introduction of the first female Doctor on Doctor Who, BBC AMERICA announced today the greenlight of the new original scripted series, The Watch, based on Sir Terry Pratchett’s wildly popular “Discworld” novels, which have sold more than 90 million books worldwide. The (8 x 60) series is produced by BBC Studios for BBC AMERICA. The Watch is distributed by BBC Studios.

The Watch is a punk rock thriller inspired by the legendary ‘City Watch’ subset of “Discworld” novels. This disruptive, character-driven thriller centers on Terry Pratchett’s misfit cops as they fight to save a ramshackle city of normalized wrongness, from both the past and future in a perilous quest. Modern and inclusive, The Watch features many famous “Discworld” creations including City Watch Captain Sam Vimes, the last scion of nobility Lady Sybil Ramkin, the naïve but heroic Carrot, the mysterious Angua and the ingenious non-binary forensics expert Cheery together with Terry Pratchett’s iconic characterization of Death.

BBC AMERICA GREENLIGHTS ORIGINAL SCRIPTED SERIES THE WATCH

hedgehog-o-brien:

I’ve been on a  Discworld re-read for about a year now, and it just struck me how Pterry gets progressively angrier and less subtle about it throughout the series.

Like, we start out nice and easy with Rincewind who’s on some wacky adventures and ha ha ha oh golly that Twoflower sure is silly and the Luggage is epic, where can I get one. Meanwhile Rincewind just wants to live out his boring days as a boring Librarian but is dragged along against his will by an annoying little tourist guy and honestly? Fuck this.

We get the first view of Sam Vimes, and he’s just a drunken beaten down sod who wants to spend his last days as a copper in some dive but oh fuck now he has to fight a dragon and honestly? Fuck this. 

The first time we see Granny Weatherwax, she’s just a cranky old woman who has never set foot outside her village but oh fuck now she has to guide this weird girl who should be a witch but is apparently a wizard all the way down to Ankh Morpork and honestly? Fuck this.

Like, these books deal with grumpy, cranky people.  But mostly, the early books are a lot of fun. Sure, they have messages about good and evil and the weirdness of the world, and they’re good messages too, but mostly they are just wacky romps through a world that’s just different enough that we can have a good laugh about it without taking things too much to heart.

But then you get to Small Gods, in which organized religion is eviscerated so thorouhgly that if it was human, even the Quisition would say it’s gone a bit too far while at the same time not condemning people having faith which is kind of an important distinction.

You get to Men at Arms and I encourage everybody with an opinion on the Second Amendment to read that one. 

You get to Jingo, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal (featuring an evil CEO who is squeezing his own company dry to get to every last penny, not caring one lick about his product or his workers or his customers or anything else and who, coincidentally, works out of Tump Tower. I’m not making this up). 

And just when you think, whew, this is getting a bit much but hey, look, he wrote YA as well! And it’s about this cute little girl who wants to be a witch and has help from a lot of rowdy blue little men, this will be fun! A bit of a break from all the anger!

Wrong. 

The Tiffany Aching books are the angriest of all. But you know what the great thing is? 

The great thing is that Pterry’s anger is the kind of fury that makes you want to get up and do something about it. It upsets you, sure. But it also says It’s up to you to change all of this. And you can change all of this, and even if you can’t. Do it anyway. Because magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

It’s the kind of anger that gives you purpose, and it gives you hope. And that concludes my essay about why the Discworld series is so gloriously cathartic to read when it seems like all the world is going to shit.

So go. Read them, get angry and then get up and fight. Fight for truth. Justice. Freedom. Reasonably priced love and, most importantly, a hard-boiled egg.

GNU Terry Pratchett.

bookhobbit:

poorlydescribedpterrybooks:

cenedrariva:

femvimes:

Describe the climax of your favorite Discworld book as poorly as possible

I’ll go first:

A berserk man solves a crime by yelling a children’s book underground

A banker/con artist sees a dog with a dildo and it gives him the freedom to confess to his crimes

A little girl fights off fairies by being greedy.

everyone get IN ON THIS

– Exhausted local man whacks a child’s terrifying haunted stick with a halfbrick in a sock and is blasted to another plane of reality for his pains

– A cranky old woman torments some vampires by not drinking a cup of tea

– Respectable young lady threatens some men and sort of discovers swearing, accidental reporter discovers his father is an even worse person than he thought

Any thoughts on Discworld daemons, if you don’t mind me asking?

random-nexus:

thecolossalennui:

roachpatrol:

notbecauseofvictories:

Vimes has a mutt.

There’s really not a nicer way to describe her, a bow-legged cross between a terrier and a feral sewer rat, mostly the color of dishwater. And she doesn’t really clean up—it becomes more embarrassing after he’s married Sybil, whose pygmy hippo daemon can go from placid river god to defensive bellowing ferocity in seconds flat, and might as well have stepped from the Morpork coat of arms. But even freshly cleaned and trussed in a gold ducal collar, his daemon looks like it was dragged backwards through a nasty bit of the Ankh.

she’s a patient tracker, though, and a rat-worrier and a sheep-herder and a snarling, protective beast—there must be some wolf in that mongrel of yours, Wolfgang tells him on that snowy plain, and Vimes figures it’s pretty likely, he’s got a wolf in him too.

Vetinari has a golden orb-weaver, who only occasional deigns to make an appearance—usually resting on the back of Vetinari’s hand, as if to make a point. (There are heads of guilds with enormous bull daemons who shiver in fear of that little spider, on that pale hand.)

Carrot has a frankly impressive lioness, whose presence made the whole watch-house fall silent the first time Carrot walked in. Vimes had been a little taken aback at the sight of her, gold and somehow not of their world, standing in their grubby and undistinguished midst.

(No one has ever asked Carrot about her, not even Angua, who has her own lovely wolfdog daemon.)

Moist has a mockingbird who perches on his shoulder, the same color as dust and utterly forgettable. (In his old glory days, he would sometimes bring a turtle or mouse with him, hiding her under his hat—sorry, wrong daemon is not an ironclad alibi, but it’s enough of a distraction to run away.) She gets along well with Spike’s terrifying peregrine, though she’s a little too excited by the feeling of being snatched out of the air in Moist’s opinion.

William de Worde has a hedgehog, who immediately curled up in a ball when faced with Sacharissa Cripslock’s ermine. (It took a while to get him to relax.)

Witches tend toward cats—or women with cat daemons turn out to be witches, they never quite decided that one. Granny Weatherwax has pure grey cat, utterly unremarkable in every way but that. (She has always been privately disappointed in him, for it. She would have preferred something a little more imposing, more obviously witchy—which, of course, is ridiculous, it is choosing that makes a witch, not her nature. But still.)

Nanny has a fat piebald cat whose amorous adventures with other daemons rival Greebo’s—he’s been known to slip off for days, only returning when Nanny is called out. Magrat has a cream shorthair who looks very handsome beside Verence’s—slightly excitable, a little graceless—hare. Even Susan, though technically not a witch, has a cat daemon, a sleek black thing that likes to play with the Death of Rats when he’s bored.

Tiffany is among the few witches who doesn’t have a cat daemon—hers doesn’t settle until she faces the hiver, until she ushers it through the black door to its death. Afterwards, Tiffany Aching knows herself to be a witch, and walks the downs with her sheepdog daemon at her side, her hat full of sky.

Sgt Colin has a mild, pleasant brown toad, a sit-and-see kind of predator. Something with the patience to outlast storms, and droughts, and long frosts. Something with a set territory and a bottomless stomach, something that can launch itself sudden, startling blur to become the last thing the unwary insect ever sees. 

Nobby Nobbs, well— no one actually knows what his daemon is. She’s as matted and filthy and scrofulous as the rest of him, a dark, oil-iridescent clot of fur— or are those bristles? or matted feathers?— nestled in between the collar of his breastplate and the dirt-stiff rim of his shirt. Rat? Pigeon? Spider? No one wants to ask. No one wants an answer. Sometimes she will extend one scaly, brittle claw out into the open air, and he will deposit into it a sugar cube, or a coin, or a bright little shard of glass, and she— whatever she is whatever she’s named— will retreat into the comfortable hollow of his armor, purring and pleased. 

She can scream like hell though, and frequently will. 

Dorfl, of course, has a phoenix— when he opened his mouth to speak his first word, there she was, a scrap of flame, on his tongue. 

Rincewind’s daemon is the luggage is a hare, all sharp bones and hide like an old carpet. Most only see her white tail shrinking in the distance.

Ridcully’s is an enormous and beautiful standard poodle: a hunting dog with a popular image as foppish or buffoonish, but there’s a reason why wizardly assassinations have fallen out of vogue.

Ponder Stibbons I’m going to give a snowy owl daemon due to some amusing design coincidences between illustrations of him and another later series about wizards and magic. cough

Hex has a daemon, and isn’t that interesting. (It’s a gnu.)

I adore these with a squeeful, giggly flailing that is probably as dangerous to myself as it may be to others. No, srsly, these were a joy to read, my face hurts from grinning so hard! ❤

Commander Vimes didn’t like the phrase ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’, believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’.

Terry Pratchett (via beornwulf)